On CIRCULAR and SPIRAL INCISED ORNAMENT on 
AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL IMPLEMENTS and 
WEAPONS. 
By R. Etheridge, Junr., Curator. 
(Plates i., ii.) 
The more or less rare occurrence of this form of sculpture on the 
implements and weapons of our Aborigines will probably render 
a notice of several instances interesting. 
The late Mr. R. Brough Smyth remarked* many years ago 
tli at — c< Curved lines are rarely seen. Any attempt to represent 
a curve in all the specimens I have examined has been a failure.’ 
Mr. Andrew Lang even made a more sweeping statement f when 
he wrote that the patterns used by the Australian Aborigines 
are such as can be produced without the aid of “ spirals or curves 
or circles.” 
Of the incorrectness of this statement, no better example 
can be adduced than the circular incised figures seen on the 
“ Bull roarers ” figured | by the late Mr. Edward Hardman, from 
the Kimberley District, N.W. Australia. 
A very beautiful instance is represented in PI. i., Fig. I and 2, 
all the more interesting because it is a stone implement, and the 
only one of its kind that has ever come under my notice. It 
consists of a flat pebble (in all probability) of indurated shale, 
long-oval in shape, and incised on both faces; five and six-eights 
inches long, and three and three-sixteenths wide, but is fractured 
at the lower end. On one aspect (PI. i., Fig. 1) is a nearly 
central figure consisting of incised circles arranged spirally within 
one another. The figure is generally very slightly longer than 
wide, the greatest or longitudinal diameter being two and fifteen- 
sixteenths inches. On the right hand side there are thirteen 
incised grooves, and on the left twelve, the grooves becoming 
slightly wider towards the circumferential one. Immediately 
above, on the same face of the pebble, are two smaller figures, the 
incised grooves, three in number in each case, being however 
simply concentric within one another, and not spiral. That on the 
right is half an-inch in diameter, and that on the loft five-eighths. 
* Smyth ; Aborigines of Victoria, i., 1878, p. 283. 
fLangj Customs and Myth, p. 279. 
JProc. R. Irish Acad., i., 1888 (2), No. 1, t. 2, f. 4, t. 3. 
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